Studies of Collagen Degradation During Bone Resorption in Tissue Culture.

Abstract

Summary A tissue culture system has been used to study the removal of bone collagen from radioactively labeled, resorbing mouse calvaria, by measuring the amount of hydroxyproline and the radioactivity of H³-hydroxyproline released into the tissue culture medium. The amounts of hydroxyproline and H³-hydroxyproline released from the calvaria were enhanced by addition of parathyroid extract to the medium and correlated with the extent of bone resorption observed microscopically in the living cultures. Evidence is presented which indicates that bone collagen is partially degraded during active bone resorption in tissue culture to peptides similar in size and sequence to those produced by the action of bacterial collagenase on collagen.